Chapter I: Pierrot Conquers Paris

Nineteenth century poets were infatuated with the Commedia dell'arte just as Debussy was, and here are some especially relevant examples of their poetry. Pierrot, with his sad face and infinitely malleable character, was a favorite.

Banville's "Pierrot" was used as a text by both Debussy and Poulenc.

Pierrot (1842)by Theodore Banville (1823-1891)

Good old Pierrot, at whom the crowd gapes,having concluded Harlequin's wedding,walks along the Boulevard du Temple, lost in thought.A girl in a supple garmentvainly teases him with a mischievous look;And meanwhile, mysterious and smooth,taking her sweetest delight in him,the white moon, bull-horned,throws a furtive glanceat her friend Jean Gaspard Deburau.

And here, find the text to the entire Pierrot Lunaire, made famous in Arnold Schoenberg's revolutionary sprechstimme setting. Written first in French, the poems reflect well the mad Pierrot who also inhabited Debussy's imagination, though Debussy imagined him as a far gentler chap.

Pierrot Lunaireby Otto Erich Hartleben (1864-1905)After the original French by Albert Giraud (1860-1929)

Moondrunk

The wine we drink through the eyesThe moon pours down at night in waves,And a flood tide overflowsThe silent horizon.

Longings beyond number, gruesome sweet frissons,Swim through the flood.The wine we drink through the eyesThe moon pours down at night in waves.

The poet, slave to devotion,Drunk on the sacred liquor,Enraptured, turns his face to HeavenAnd staggering sucks and slurpsThe wine we drink through the eyes.

Mercenary Sun, beknighted, gob-gonged, passed up high,
Planter badly raised, know that the Vestals, those
For whom the Moon becomes, with her dubious tiger's eye,
In the Unique Cathedral's rosace the very rose;

Know that the Pierrots, too, the moths of megaliths,
And white chrysalids of lakes in which Gomorrah lies,
And all the lucky types that graze in Eden myths'
Perpetual springtime of renunciations — hate your rise.

Know that they hold for you a special scorn of theirs,
Fop, Pander, Ruffian, Flash Immigré with stuff
Like charms of golden eggs, with high and mighty airs
Towards the earth and her little lunar Orphan-scruff.

You carry on supplying settings — bibulous,
Tomorrows vomited from national festival,
And polish up your seasons to unleash on us
Sensational Apotheosis of the Umbilical.

Go, Phoebal! But, Deva, god of reared arising,
Heed for once this Port-Royal of aesthetes instead;
In lunar open-air decamerons they're devising
Nothing less than the price to fix upon your head.

Yes, true, you've still some splendid days to come, above,
But now the tribe of these old-practised rogues grows still,
The WHAT'S-THE-GOODS?, who go on dreaming art and love
Upon the inorganic Aggregate's far sill.

And so, old Beau, today we'll be content for now
With wagging underneath your Idleness's nose
The word which Man's already branded on your brow;
A thing like that, I bet, you'd never once suppose?

— So know that there's a fine phrase going round; it's bone
Sonorous but very null like medullar juice,
All humbug hollowed out: Fustian, your own
Phoebal Solecism! — Further strictures no use…

Images

The Belgian painter, James Ensor, makes the macabre links between Pierrot and death all too clear in this and other paintings. The thin line between comedy and tragedy is unmistakable, and Ensor's fascination with masks here spreads from the Commedia to the skeletons which decked his art studio.

Musical examples

Given that the Commedia was said to originate in Bergamo, and Pierrot was indelibly associated with the moon, Suite Bergamasque's "Clair de Lune" is certainly a first step in comprehending Debussy's relationship to the Commedia.

The Etudes have no titular connection to the Commedia, but of all Debussy's works they are the most volatile, the most unpredictable, the most capricious. Their link with the mindset of the Commedia is undeniable.

Further Notes on The Etudes:No. 1, Pour les cinq doigts d’après Monsieur Czerny is the most obvious comedic take-off of the lot, for it is, of course, a wicked parody of Czerny exercises. However, its fascination lies in the fact that its prosaic five finger patterns manage, against all odds, to flirt with loveliness, and in fact to frequently become outright beautiful. The music seems to insist that parody and authenticity can exist on the same turf, that the coexistence of opposites is the way of the world. The annoying task of the sullen child and the arabesques of the elevated artist cannot be so easily unraveled from one another, and here one of them constantly interrupts and transforms the other. Eventually Czerny’s opening scales become a form of color rather than a piece of drudgery(e.g. m. 72) and they’re then so pleased with themselves that they multiply in celebration, swirling to a grand finale that traverses the entire keyboard in one last rapid-fire scale.

No. 2, Pour les tierces is perhaps the least commedic of the set. Debussy seems more influenced here by Chopin’s etude in thirds than by Pierrot. One thing follows another in rational order and virtuosity reigns, but even here there are scherzando moments that come upon us unexpectedly and remind us that a circus is always lurking around the corner. Measure 6 is the first example, with its tenor melody in staccato emerging suddenly in the midst of such well-oiled legato. Then comes the unprepared intensity of the cry at m. 13, which recurs at the end. As in the other etudes, Debussy calls for rubato here, using the rubato as a way to subvert the predictability of a steady meter. The big difference here is that the outlying moments feel more integrated than ostracized; tempo, dynamic, and articulation are more of a piece in this etude, and distraction is pushed aside rather than encouraged.

No. 3, Pour les quartes, delights in the unfamiliarity of quartal harmonies, and the shock of non-sequitors, where one kind of material follows on the heels of another without preparation. The violence of the explosive stretto in m. 7 has nothing to do with the dance-world dolce of the opening, and even the musical terminology used in this Etude is elusive. Where else in the literature does one encounter instructions like “ballabile” and “scherzare?” A new vocabulary was needed to instruct the performer when melodies were fragmentary, rhythms constantly shifting, and rough and frightening fortes prone to burst out in the midst of bucolic tranquility.

No. 4, Pour les sixtes, with its gently undulating, sinuous opening, deceives us into thinking that at last an Etude will stay true to its opening promise. After all, these pieces are so brief they surely do not necessitate contrast. But no. The dolce opening mood again proves brittle, and its calm contemplations are shattered by a nervous repeated note figure (m. 21) that, though temporarily banished by a dancing rubato idea, reasserts its jittery presence (m. 38), and only gradually gives way to the sensuality of the opening at the very end. Debussy wrote while composing the piece that “For a longtime the continuous use of sixths remind me of pretentious young ladies sitting in a salon, sulkily doing their tapestry work and envying the scandalous laughter of the naughty ninths... “

No. 5, Pour les octaves, does what all octave etudes are supposed to do – it raises hell. But this one not only makes difficulties for the performer, but also for the listener. It would be the rare listener indeed who could accurately follow the meter and conduct this piece. What begins as a recognizable, if unusually boisterous, waltz, quickly sheds that identity, transforming itself eventually into a would-be marimba lick, “très égalment rythmé,” “con sordino” and obviously sans nuance. One can virtually hear drumsticks clicking. That doesn’t last either, though, as the single notes of the marimba multiply into parallel octaves with manically difficult leaps. (m. 76) These subside just as rapidly as the material that follows—the etudes exist in a highly ephemeral universe where change is the only constant. Eventually the opening returns and the piece crashes to an end with a loud, affirmative, and tonal cadence – the acrobat here has earned his applause, but certainly not by dint of any known routine!

No. 6, Pour les huit doigts, forms a nice counterpart to “Pour le cinq doigts.” Here the pianist has lost one finger on each hand, condemned to play without a thumb, but whizzing along all the same. This etude, like No. 2, is far more of a piece than most of the others; its whirring 32nds are interrupted notably only once, by heady glissandos followed by trills. These mark the only forte until the end of the piece as well. Note values otherwise shift only from very fast duplets to very fast triplets and even the meter shift from2/4 to 3/4in m. 54, with its newly encountered bass melody, feels integrated. The piece whips itself around with the skill of a magician, and at the end, the magician grins knowingly and plucks his last note very softly --as if to say that all the preceding was smoke and mirrors, and all that really exists is this last pianissimo 8th note.

No. 7, Pour les degrees chromatiques, seems to me to mark the reappearance of Puck in La danse de Puck and the fairies of Les fees sont d’exquises danceuses from Preludes, Book I and 11. Debussy must have missed their “sly malice!” This music is similarly airborne, flying through high registers, delighting in mischievous dotted rhythms, and zooming in for an earthly landing only in the very last bars. Almost the entire piece is played at piano or below; the fairies are plotting in whispers.

No. 8, Pour les agréments, epitomizes the willingness to undermine every statement with a contrary statement that characterizes both the Commedia and late Debussy. Debussy oscillates between the exquisite embellishments of the opening and the carnival material abruptly introduced in m. 21. The next 20 measures, until the opening returns, constantly teeter between a grave, delicate elegance and a bumptious vaudeville romp. This is one of the most melodious of the etudes, but the melodies are always in flux: the opening 32nd note idea gives birth to melodic ideas so dissimilar that the listener is hard pressed to associate them, let alone hear them in close proximity. As in Etude No. 1, the line is blurry here between comedy and serious theater, but both seem to amicably tolerate life with the other.

No. 9, Pour les notes répétées, Even the premise of this etude is perverse, for all those extra repetitions are just a stunt – we would have heard the melody just fine had every note been played only once! The music is appropriately jerky, stopping and starting, and proceeding in fits and starts. It generally smiles on the world, but shifts its vantage points from that of a slightly irascible marionette in the opening to that of a lyrical string player, first in m. 28, then again in 55 and 58. There are strident outbreaks along the way – this etude is the antithesis of smoothness – but the end is reassuring; it saunters to a carefree close, announcing again that everyone involved has come to a friendly understanding.

In No. 10, Pour les sonorities opposés, the music starts out in an eerie- almost-Schoenbergian universe of dissonance. It’s the only etude to begin in slow outer space, and it banishes the nervous energy of the previous piece entirely. We hear immediately that the piece will be about both opposing sonorities and opposing registers, or opposites colliding. The low gongs which pervade the opening follow us through much of the piece, and the crossed hands first indicated in m. 7 are also omnipresent, signaling perhaps a physical crossing of opposing fields. Strangely out of place in this mysterious universe, a pert dotted-rhythm figure manages to escape the overriding solemnity (m. 31), and it refuses thereafter to be banished completely. We forget its insouciance while attending to the next episode, an increasingly impassioned tenor melody again played with crossed hands, but it is intrepid, returning twice more and dominating the ending. Even in the midst of this intense gravity, Debussy’s joker makes himself known.

Likewise in Etude No. 11, Pour les arpèges composés, the delicacy of the music, so firmly established by cascades of sensual arpeggios, is eventually displaced by burlesque humor. The first hint appears in m. 25 when the heretofore seamless flow of notes is interrupted by a rest and a quick fortissimo upward spiral. The staccatos and marcatos and “un poco pomposo” of m. 25-28 then prepare us for the “giocoso” section beginning in m. 29, where the music stops and starts unpredictably and appears to delight in being disrupted. We lurch along with it, taking the bumps in good humor, but wondering whatever became of that “dolce e lusingando” we’d been primed for at the beginning. It returns, though not entirely unscathed – a somewhat chastened clown makes his presence felt again in m. 58 and 60. Once again, an armistice between opposing aesthetics has been arranged, and in this case, the clown has been subdued and finally put to sleep.

No. 12, Pour les accords, is bombastic, almost diabolical in its rhythmical trickery. Its plays on 6/8 bring “Masques” to mind, but here the knavery has upped the ante. Only in Brahms had 6/8 meter previously met so many incarnations, and Brahms wasn’t nearly as roguish about it. For one thing, he didn’t make pianists jump around on the piano as if it were their private trampoline; Banville’s exhortations to his clown to jump higher, ever higher ring very true here! For another, Brahms provided a smoother ride; energy levels didn’t zoom from maximum to minimum with barely a transitional gear in between. Debussy’s hard-pressed athlete finds himself floating amidst barely-moving static harmonies in the middle of the piece just as he’d warmed up his speediest act. He gets to start jumping again, though – if Debussy had known Energizer Bunnies he might have welcomed them into this steely Commedia!